ABSTRACT
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) drew on service as a legislator (provincial assembly, Virginia and Continental Congress) in the 1760s through the 1780s and as the presiding officer of the United Senate (1797–1801) to compose his Manual of Parliamentary Practice for the Use of the Senate of the United States (published 1801, rev. ed. 1812). The Manual’s framework relied on the Rules for Conducting Business in the Senate. Jefferson supported his analysis of best practices with 658 citations, the vast majority of which were of British origin. To articulate the civic life of the new republic and its republican purpose, Jefferson assessed progress in the parliamentary codes of its new assemblies. The performance standards he proclaimed were ‘accuracy in business, economy of time, order, uniformity and impartiality’.
